THE Irish American businessman Mr Bill Flynn has warned that the US administration and the Irish American community may turn its back on the republican movement if IRA violence continues.
Mr Flynn, one of the key Irish Americans who played a role in brokering the IRA ceasefire, said yesterday that in the US there is now "massive disaffection with the tactics being used by the republican movement since the end of the ceasefire".
Asked if the US could "slam the door" on Sinn Fein, he said: "Yes . . . If the violence continues there will be not just a lack of support but real disgust" in the US at the IRA's actions.
Mr Flynn was speaking at a press conference in Dublin at the end of a visit to Ireland. He said he had met "some pretty important people" involved in the Northern Ireland conflict, but declined to name them.
He had come to Ireland as chairman of the National Committee for American Foreign Policy, he said, "to let the parties involved know how we feel. We told them of our lack of support for violence, and expressed the view that the conclusions of the Mitchell Commission on arms decommissioning should be accepted by all parties, and that there should be an IRA ceasefire."
He said, however, that the demands for decommissioning of paramilitary weapons before Sinn Fein's participation in substantive talks "violate not only the understandings reached between the two governments and the paramilitaries that led to the ceasefires in the first pace but also, and importantly, they stand in violation of the Mitchell Commission principles and recommendations and have thus completely derailed the peace process.
He had always believed there had been an understanding that decommissioning would not be a precondition to Sinn Fein's entry to talks. There would not have been a ceasefire had there not been such an understanding, he said.
He said he believed an IRA ceasefire would be declared, but he could not say when. He said Irish Americans still believed that the Sinn Fein leader, Mr Gerry Adams, was a man of peace, and we would be shocked if we learned otherwise.
He agreed that the helpfulness shown by the US administration to Sinn Fein leaders in allowing them to visit the US regularly could evaporate unless a ceasefire is declared. Sinn Fein was "going to lose our moral support" if violence continued.
"It's the violence we detest, not the principles for which they are fighting, namely the reunification of Ireland. People are entitled to have that as a goal. What we object to is that this is being done over the dead bodies of the other tradition."